Is the First Chapter of Genesis Historical and Scientific?

There is no part of the Bible that the more scholarly opponents of its Divine origin are more fond of attacking than the very first chapter in the Book. Time and again have we been assured that the teachings of this chapter are in hopeless conflict with the best established conclusions of modern science. Even a prominent theological teacher in a supposedly Christian university has said that “no one who knows what history and science are would think of calling the first chapter of Genesis either historical or scientific.” But in spite of this confident assertion, men who have gained a name as historians beyond anything that this teacher of theology can expect, assure us that it is not only historical, but the very foundation of history. Other men, who have secured for themselves a position in the scientific world to which this teacher can never hope to aspire, assure us that this chapter agrees absolutely with everything that is known scientifically of the origin and early history of the earth. For example, there is no name more honoured in the scientific world to-day than that of Lord Kelvin. Lord Kelvin, in a letter to a friend of mine, says, “Physical science has nothing to say against the order of creation as given in Genesis.”

But let us come to the specific difficulties in the first chapter of Genesis. The objector is fond of telling us that “the first chapter of Genesis says that the world was created in six days of twenty-four hours each, when everyone who is familiar with modern science knows that the world as it now stands was millions of years in the making.” This objection sounds well, but the one who makes it displays a hopeless ignorance of the Bible. Anyone who is at all familiar with the Bible and the Bible usage of words knows that the use of the word “day” is not limited to periods of twenty-four hours. It is frequently used of a period of time of an entirely undefined length. For example, in Joel 3: 18-20, the millennial period is spoken of as a “day.” In Zech. 2: 10-13, the millennial period is again spoken of as a “day,” and again in Zech. 13:1, 2; 14:9. Even in the second chapter of Genesis the whole period covered by the six days of the first account is spoken of as a “day” (Gen. 2:4, 5). There is no necessity whatever for interpreting the days of Genesis 1 as solar days of twenty-four hours each. They may be vast periods of undefined length. But someone may say, “This is twisting the Scriptures to make them fit the conclusions of modern science.” The one who says so simply displays his ignorance of the history of Biblical interpretation. St. Augustine, as far back as the fourth century, centuries before Modern Science and its conclusions were dreamed of, interpreted the days of Genesis 1 as periods of time, just as the word means in many places elsewhere in the Bible.

Another point urged against the truth and accuracy in the account of creation given in Genesis 1 is, that it speaks of “there being light before the sun existed, and it is absurd to think of light before the sun, the source of light.” The one who says this displays his ignorance of modern science. Anyone who is familiar with the nebular hypothesis, commonly accepted among scientific men to-day, knows that there were cosmic light ages before the sun became differentiated from the general luminous nebulous mass as a separate body.

But the objector further urges against the scientific accuracy of Genesis 1 that the order of creation in

Genesis 1 is not the order determined by the investigations of modern science; but this is an assertion that cannot be proven. It was the writer’s privilege to study geology under that prince of geologists, who has been pronounced by competent authority to be the greatest scientific thinker of the nineteenth century with the exception of Charles Darwin, namely Professor James D. Dana, of Yale. Professor Dana once said in my presence that one reason why he believed the Bible to be the Word of God was because of the marvellous accord of the order of creation given in Genesis with that worked out by the best scientific investigation. Note also what Lord Kelvin is quoted as saying in the early part of this chapter. It must be said, however, that men of science are constantly changing their views of what was the exact order of creation. Very recently discoveries have been made that have overthrown theories of the order of creation held by many men of science and which did not seem to some to harmonize with the order as given in the first chapter of Genesis; but these recent discoveries have brought the order into harmony with the order as given in that chapter.

There is no need of going in detail into this order of creation as taught by modern science and taught in Genesis 1. There is grave reason to doubt if anything in Genesis 1, after verse 1, relates to the original creation of the universe. All the verses after the first seem rather to refer to a refitting of the world that had been created, and had afterwards been plunged into chaos by the sin of some pre-Adamic race, to be the abode of the present race that inhabits it, the Adamic race. The reasons for so thinking are, first, that the words translated “without form and void” (R. V. “waste and void”) are used everywhere else in the Bible of the state of affairs that God brought upon persons and places as a punishment for sin. For example, in Is. 34:11 we read of the judgment that

God should bring upon Idumea as a punishment for their sins in these words, “He shall stretch over it a line of confusion and a plummet of emptiness” (R. V.). The Hebrew words translated “Confusion and emptiness” are the same that are translated “without form and void” in Gen. 1:2. We read again in Jer. 4: 23-27 “I beheld the earth, and, lo, it was waste and void,” etc., etc. In both instances the words “waste and void” refer to a ruin which God had sent as a punishment for sin, and the assumption is very strong that they have a similar significance in Genesis 1.

The second reason for this interpretation is stronger yet, namely, that the Bible expressly declares that God did not create the earth “in vain” (Is. 45:18). But the word translated “in vain” in this passage is precisely the one translated “without form” in Gen. 1: 2. In the Revised Version of Gen. 1:2 and Is. 45:18 the word is translated in both instances “waste.” Here, then, is a plain and specific declaration in the Bible that God did not create the earth “without form” or (rather “waste” R. V.), so it is plain that Gen. 1:2 cannot refer to the original creation. The word translated “was” in Gen. 1:2 can, with perfect propriety, be translated “became”; then Gen. 1: 2 would read, “And the earth became waste and void.” In that case in Gen. 1:1 we have the actual account of creation. It is very brief, but wonderfully expressive, instructive and suggestive. In Gen. 1:2 we have a brief but suggestive account of how the earth became involved in desolation and emptiness, presumably through the sin of some pre-Adamic race. Then all after verse two does not describe the original creation of the earth, but its fitting up anew for the new race God was to bring upon the earth — the Adamic race. Even if we allow the word “was” to stand in Gen. 1:2, and do not substitute the word “became,” it does not materially affect the interpretation.

If this be the true interpretation of the chapter (and the argument for this interpretation seems conclusive), then of course this record cannot by any possibility come into conflict with any discoveries of geology as yet made or to be made, for the geological strata lie back of the period here described. The agreement of the order as set forth in Genesis 1 with the order as discovered by science would be accounted for by the fact that God always works in orderly progress from the lower to the higher.